Donald Kaberuka

President, African Development Bank Group

Mr. Donald Kaberuka is currently serving his second five-year term as President of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB). He was first elected in 2005, becoming the seventh president of the Bank Group since its establishment in 1963.

He was re-elected in May 2010 at the AfDB’s headquarters in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, for a second five-year term. He took the oath for his second term in September of that year in Tunis, the Bank’s current temporary relocation city. The Bank moved temporarily from Abidjan in 2003 due to the security situation there.

Before joining the African Development Bank, Mr. Kaberuka, 60, had a distinguished career in banking, international trade and development and government service A national of Rwanda, he was the country’s Minister of Finance and Economic Planning between 1997 and 2005. During this period, he oversaw Rwanda’s successful economic reconstruction after the end of the civil war there.

He initiated and implemented major economic reforms and introduced new systems of structural, monetary and fiscal governance, laying special emphasis on the independence of Rwanda’s central bank.

These reforms led to the widely-recognized revival of Rwanda’s economy, and to the sustained economic growth that enabled Rwanda to obtain debt cancellation under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative in April 2005.

During his service at the AfDB, Mr Kaberuka has presided over a major redirection in its strategy for development and poverty reduction in Africa. To that end, the AfDB has placed increased emphasis on the private sector, and on the importance of major infrastructure developments in areas such as road, railways, power plants and communications, especially in their role in promoting regional integration in Africa.

During Mr Kaberuka’s period of office, the AfDB has become Africa’s premier financial institution. In 2009, in response to the global financial crisis, the African Development Bank Group made record approvals of loans and grants totaling more than USD 12.6 billion.

Donald Kaberuka was educated at universities in Tanzania and Scotland. He holds a PhD in Economics from Glasgow University.

Director, Economics of Sustainability, The Institute for New Economic Thinking, Oxford Martin School; and Professor of Environmental Economics, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford